Joe Biden says that he won’t “impose” on others the Catholic Church’s understanding that the life of a human being begins at conception. But, contrary to what Biden maintains, the Catholic Church’s understanding rests on science, not theology. So Biden can’t coherently explain why it is fine for him to pursue his own (blinkered) grasp of the Catholic Church’s “social doctrine” but somehow illegitimate to protect the lives of the vulnerable unborn. Biden’s abandonment some three decades ago of the pro-life convictions he once espoused would seem to have much more to do with his political ambitions than anything else.

More broadly, anyone who fails to recognize the elementary biological reality that the life of a human being begins at conception should be taken as seriously on abortion policy as a member of the Flat Earth Society should be heard to speak on space exploration.

In discussing the Supreme Court, Biden also raised the specter that a President Romney would appoint “someone like Scalia” who would “outlaw abortion.” But Justice Scalia’s position (and that of every other justice who has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade) is merely that the Constitution itself does not contain a right to abortion but instead leaves the matter of abortion policy to the legislative arena, where legislators have broad freedom to permit, prohibit, or otherwise regulate abortion. One might have hoped that a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee would understand that basic point.